Associate Professor of Chinese Carl Robertson delivered an invited presentation titled “Beautiful Writing and the Art of Living: An Introduction to Chinese Writing,” for International Chinese Language Day at the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China in Washington D.C. on April 20.

Associate Professor of Chinese Carl Robertson presented an invited lecture in Chinese, entitled “Translation and Cultural Communication: How a Twentieth-Century Concept of Chinese Language Transformed the Language of Western Poetry,” addressing AI in light of the revolutionary effect of Ezra Pound’s theories and translation of Chinese language, as part of the series “Professional Lecture Forum on Foreign Languages,” at the Translation Department of Huazhong Agricultural University in Wuhan, Hubei, China on June 11.

Associate Professor of Chinese Carl Robertson presented an invited lecture in Chinese, entitled “Who is Writing? Comparing Ideas of Self in Understanding Chinese Calligraphy” for the Fujian Scholar Forum, held at Fujian Normal University in Fuzhou, Fujian, China, on June 5.

Associate Professor of Chinese Carl Robertson delivered an invitational keynote address in Chinese, entitled “Excellence in Teaching through Collaboration and Empathy,” dedicated to the memory of Professor of Art Star Varner and in partial fulfillment of her charge, to the “China-US College Chinese Language Teachers Association” (unofficial translation of the recently inaugurated 中美高校中文教师联) at Xiamen University in Xiamen, China, on May 31.

Associate Professor of Chinese Carl Robertson, with the assistance of Coordinator of Alumni and Parent Relations Serena Bettis, presented a personal introduction to Chinese culture and literature to alumni, incoming and current students, and others on August 26. Titled “The Strange Case of the Teacher Whose Life Has Become a Series of Chinese Poems: My Adventures Living in and Teaching about China,” the virtual event addressed from a personal perspective ways of seeing and participating in the environmental and social worlds as practiced by Chinese poets. 

Associate Professor of Chinese Carl Robertson, in conjunction with several colleagues, hosted and presented a virtual workshop through ACS, titled “Technologies, Pedagogies, and Best Practices for Teaching Chinese Online,” on July 8. As part of the intended outcomes and at the request of several junior faculty in attendance, Robertson followed up by initiating an intercampus network, tentatively called INCPENS (Intercampus Chinese Pedagogy Network for Small Programs). Robertson organized and hosted two of three planned virtual meetings, on July 27 and August 17, respectively, including collecting and posting shared resources. The response of the participants so far indicates that some form of this network will continue for the foreseeable future.